


A Night of Painting

by HogwartsConsultingDetective



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-01
Updated: 2014-02-01
Packaged: 2018-01-10 19:06:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1163377
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HogwartsConsultingDetective/pseuds/HogwartsConsultingDetective
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean catches Castiel at his secret pastime and responds differently than Cas expects, and even comes to give Cas a push that he needed for a specific project he was working on.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Night of Painting

Castiel smeared the blue paint across the surface of the paper, it’s oily texture smoothing the rough surface. He paused to wipe his face with his arm, the only part of him not covered in multicolored goo, and gazed at his work. Trying to maintain an objective standpoint, even though he knew no one but himself would see, Cas noted the gentle hues of purple in the approaching storm clouds, the swollen look of them that Cas achieved with reds and blues. He admired the contours of the mountain and the detail of the pasture beneath, the shadow of the man in the distance who was walking back to his home after a day of work. Still, something felt missing.  
Cas wiped the thin paintbrush on his stained denim shirt and dipped it into the red, hoping that the color would inspire some meaningful addition to the painting. He found none. Sighing, Cas sat back on his feet, hoping that his sigh didn’t wake Dean or Sam. The boys didn’t know of Cas’s artistic expression, and he hoped that they wouldn’t find out. What with their general dislike of emotional expression and skeptically crude views on any art that didn’t involve blood or (in Dean’s case) a guitar, Cas had no doubt that they would both laugh if they knew that every night, instead of lying in bed and pretending to be asleep like them, he came into the kitchen and painted.  
Rather than face blood soaked nightmares and horrifying flashbacks like the Winchesters, Castiel had made the decision to explore the human’s culture beyond that of the Impala’s windshield and back-roads towns, and was delighted to find painting. Since then, he had come into the kitchen every night and pulled out paints, brushes, and whatever canvas he could find, and mixing the colors of the sunrise, racing the sun to see who could light up the world with his colors faster.  
He had been staying at the bunker for at least a month now, and had done this every day, painting scenery or portraits or images or abstract. Anything with colors and paintbrushes. He looked at the basic colors and commanded them to his will, molded them through trial and error and many spills and wasted paint. It was exhausting, gave him a back cramp, and often ruined shirts; and Cas absolutely loved it. He loved the feel of smooth paint sliding across rough canvas. He loved the search for a fresh idea, his sticky fingers subconsciously tapping against each other. The sudden moment of clarity when a brilliant idea hit him, which was what stage he was hoping to reach now.  
Cas leaned back against the counter and shut his eyes, allowing the darkness to engulf him and allow him to see the spark of an idea behind closed lids. The only thing Cas found was sleep. A dreamless, sweet sleep, feet cramped beneath legs, back aching against the cabinet’s handles, head lolling helplessly on his shoulders. 

 

Dean woke up at some ungodly hour, knife in hand and another cut on his arm from restless sleeping. He cursed as the blood began dribbling onto the floor and got up to get a paper towel from the kitchen. The cold wood floor hit his feet like ice and sent ripples up his legs, but he ignored it and walked into the kitchen.  
He froze when he got there. It was beautiful. A huge canvas, at least 4 feet by 3 feet, covered the kitchen tile. A pasture of some kind, holding small white animals, cradled between a set of purple mountains, still capped with icy snow. The sky was blue with only a few puffy white clouds, but a storm threatened the background, its purple ominous against the blue. There were plants and a small creek and the edge of a petit house and shadows and birds and detail, and the colors. The colors mesmerized Dean, pulling him around the island. He saw Cas.  
His first instinct was medical aid and defense. Someone was here. Cas was hurt. But then Dean saw the gentle rise and fall of the man’s chest as he breathed in a dreamless sleep. Dean couldn’t help but smile through the shock of what Cas meant. The ex-angel had painted this? Dean couldn’t believe it for a moment, but decided it wasn’t that unbelievable after a moment.  
Cas was leaned back against the counter, his plaid sweats bunched at the knees, as if he had repeatedly pulled them up. His denim shirt, stained into a rainbow of colors, was unbuttoned to a white tank-top that hugged his fit body well. Dean jerked his eyes away.  
He pulled off a paper towel strip and pressed it to his no longer bleeding arm, mopping up the blood that looked dull next to the colors of the painting. Still holding the paper towel to his arm, Dean crouched down next to the angel, careful not to disturb the paint. “Cas” said Dean, giving his friend a gentle squeeze on the shoulder. “Cas, buddy, you okay?” Stupid question. Of course he’s okay, he just painted a freaking masterpiece!  
Cas’s eyes fluttered open, his lashes casting beautiful mini torrents into the air. He blinked up at Dean with those eyes that even the colors on the painting couldn’t beat and looked concerned for a moment, his brain clicking to combat mode as soon as he woke up. When his surrounding caught up with him, however, Cas sighed and cast his eyes downward, waiting for the laugh or call for Sam.  
All he heard, however, was “you okay?” He blinked up at Dean, as if not sure of the question. “Cas?” asked Dean, concerned about his angel again, “Everything okay?”  
“Hello, Dean” said Cas in that voice of his. The voice that could harmonize with the purr of an engine and sing to the chorus of the heavens. “Did something happen?”  
Dean took his eyes away from Cas’s and gestured to his arm, the paper towel now bled through and red. Cas leaped forward, concerned, and reached for the towel. Dean was too dazed by Cas for the moment to resist, preferring to stare at the angel’s mouth as he focused on Dean’s cut. Savoring the tingles that were sent up his spine any time Cas touched him, brushed his skin or cloth.  
He had reached a point where he had stopped trying to convince himself that his feelings for Cas weren’t there, and was simply left trying to hide it from everyone. His father’s voice still rang in his ears. “Goddamn homosexuals,” he would say, before yelling “FAGS!” after them. “Remember them Dean,” he would say, gripping his son’s shoulder just a little too tightly, “Remember the wimps.”  
Dean never understood why it was wrong to his dad. Sure, lots of people thought that it was wrong because of a small book that no one is sure who wrote, although their grandpa says that God wrote it. Dad just thought it was not right because it didn’t fit his idea of a man. Dean knew that, of course, but wanted to just get one thing right for his dad in his life. Just one thing to make dad proud, please.  
Dean pulled away from Cas gently, hoping that doing so would alleviate some of the pressure. It only made it worse. The air between them begged to be compressed, the skin that Cas had been touching suddenly cold without the ex-angel’s presence.  
Dean cleared his throat to search for something to say. “Nice painting,” he blurted. Great dumbass. That was either sarcastic or kiss up-y. Dean turned back to Cas and saw his head hung. “Hey,” said Dean, a little firmer this time, “I mean it.” Cas looked up at Dean’s meadow green eyes, the life in them no matter how hard John had tried to drain it, hardy as Dean. He looked back at the painting skeptically and shook his head.  
“How long have you been doing this?” he asked.  
“I’m not sure. Since I turned human, maybe, but I remember watching others do it when you weren’t around.” Dean felt a surge of jealousy that the angel watched others paint, or was even out when Dean wasn’t. Jesus, Dean he said to himself, Get a fucking grip.  
He crouched next to the painting, a few feet from Cas and pointed out the beautiful things he saw. He reassured Cas that he wouldn’t tell Sam. He checked the time for the two of them and found that it was 2 in the morning. He grabbed a beer because he was going to sleep soon. He drank another. Cas had one too.  
Soon it was 3:30 in the morning and they were both on the kitchen floor, opposite one another, leaned against cabinets, their legs brushing ever so slightly. The space in between was filled with voice. Cas’s purr of a voice, Dean’s mulled-in-a-whiskey-barrel voice, floating above and around and through, changing melodies and parts and warming the cold floor of the kitchen. Stories and jokes and ideas rolled off their tongues and slipped into the other’s ears, tickling sweet sensations into their brain. When it fell silent, it was still a full silence, as if they didn’t even need to speak to communicate.  
Of course, just like in all of the movies, they wound up staring at one another. It was just an easy stare, as if searching vaguely in each other’s eyes. But then Dean realized that he had been staring glazed eyed at this man for at least 15 minutes and hadn’t broken eye contact in that time. His eyes changed and so did Cas’s, mirroring Dean’s.  
Dean got up off the floor suddenly and walked over to the door quickly, eager to get out before something happened that would upset dad, wherever the hell he was.  
“Dean.” He stopped cold, unable to resist the gravity of that voice. He gave a small shake of his head, Don’t Cas. Please do. No, don’t. Please.  
“What?” he asked, turning to see a standing Cas, who had taken on the puppy eye look that he was so goddamn good at. Dean looked into the eyes without thought or anxiousness. It was as natural as breathing. If Cas looks at Dean, Dean looks at Cas. It is inevitable.  
Cas approached Dean slowly, as if scared that Dean would run or punch him. Dean wanted to. God, did he want to run. Instead, he stood glued to the threshold of himself and his father. Cas stopped just inside the kitchen, just inside Dean’s true self. He didn’t want to force Dean. Cas wanted him to the make the leap. Cas held his arms out.  
Dean walked into them. At first, he tried to make it a friend hug, quick and hard. Soon it melted into something else. Not just a romantic hug. A needy hug. Dean clung to Cas like a drowning sailor to a lifeboat, desperate to not be dragged down. Cas clung to Dean like a kite to a child, unable to let go lest he get to caught up in the wind. They hung on one another for a long time, until Cas could safely say that he had lost the race with the sun tonight.  
Then they pulled away. Dean turned to walk back to his room, almost sadly. He felt a hand on his, wrapped around it. It pulled him back, and he twisted his head around just in time to meet with Cas. They rested their foreheads together, Dean shakily, Cas warily, staring into their eyes through the others, too scared to break apart, too scared to come together. Dean closed the gap first.  
They were fucked up, yes. Unlikely to survive the year, yes. Scared out of their lives and tired beyond belief, yes. But for that moment, they were happy. For that moment, in the kitchen of the bunker that Dean was so proud of as the sun kissed the earth good morning, in paint stained pajamas next to a colorful masterpiece, they were kissing.  
Their lips connected them into soul, and Dean wished that it was more fabulous. It was the kind of kiss that deserved fireworks or a water show. An electrical accident or a helicopter jump at the end. It was the kind of kiss that plays to dramatic orchestra music, that causes people to curl up into balls and squeal into their pillow.  
They didn’t need any of that, however, because there were fireworks in both of their minds. They felt that they were floating away with euphoria, Dean holding Cas’s hand against his chest, his other against the back of his neck, both of Cas’s hands clutched into Dean’s plaid shirt.  
When they finally pulled apart their lips, they felt a sense of lightness, as if some heavy weight had been riding on them since they met, and that kiss relieved it. No going back now, Dean he thought to himself, hopefully dad can’t see you.  
He smiled at Cas, that special smile reserved just for him, then gestured back to his bedroom. Cas cocked his head to the side, as if unsure, and Dean just shrugged noncommittally. In honesty, it was so relieving to finally allow himself to feel something, that he would take anything from cuddling under the covers to hardcore sex. As long as it was with Cas, Dean was beyond happy.  
Cas nodded and held up a finger, telling Dean that he would be there in a minute. Dean nodded, still smiling, and walked back to his room, a swagger in his step that Cas had never seen. He dashed back to the painting.  
He knew what was missing.  
He found the dark shadow of the man, hunched from work, on his way back to the cabin. Cas took his paintbrush and dipped it into the last of the black paint. He drew a few short lines with his eyes, then filled it in with his hands. He watched the thought take shape with the paint, and grinned at the effect. He rinsed and put away the equipment then, leaving the painting out to dry, ran back after Dean, his lip tingling for more.  
The painting’s color dimmed the bunker’s kitchen, and looked almost identical to the one Cas had been working on hours earlier, except for one addition. There were two men walking back to the cabin, and they were holding hands.


End file.
